Critical Illness and Injury Interest Group

The Critical Illness and Injury Scientific Interest Group (CII-SIG) was originally formed in response to a burgeoning interest in the role of functional genomics in critical care medicine and to NIH’s growing interest in and commitment to translational research. The group held its inaugural meeting at the Fourth Symposium on the Functional Genomics of Critical Illness and Injury, held at NIH in November 2006. CII-SIG currently serves as an inter-institute clearinghouse for information exchange and discussion among scientists from the myriad disciplines and agencies that span this area of clinical research. The goal of the CII-SIG is to help transform critical care medicine by developing a global understanding of complex biological processes and systems, integrating pathophysiology, cell biology, and genomic/genetic programs induced by infection, trauma, and other inflammatory triggers. To help achieve these goals, CII-SIG has partnered with members from the NIH intramural and extramural community to form a collaborative research group called the United States Critical Illness and Injury Trials (USCIIT) Group.

This research collaboration provides a structure to foster investigator-initiated hypothesis testing and to develop recommendations for strategic plans at a national level (Critical Care Medicine 2009;37:3158). To these ends, the CII-SIG and USCIIT provide a biweekly teleconference venue for governance and collaboration, supports a multi-society task force for research strategic planning, catalyzes HHS inter-agency dialogue for endorsement of transforming initiatives (e.g., NIH-ASPR-FDA-CDC), helps to coordinate research nationally as a CTSA LISTSERV, and fosters innovative, multidisciplinary, multicenter studies the results of which will improve clinical care. In addition, CII-SIG sponsors symposia, poster sessions, and lectures and offers mentoring and career guidance for junior scientists. USCIIT (www.usciitg.org) is endorsed by all the major U.S. critical illness and injury professional organizations and has grown to include over 200 investigators across more than 70 ICU’s, distributed nationally.

The CII-SIG provides an intramural link to NIH resources and in collaboration with USCIIT organizes some of the investigator-initiated projects into large-scale collaborative programs consistent with the recent consensus strategic plan for critical illness and injury research in the U.S (Chest. 2013;143:808). These include 1) investigations that study methods to identify and prevent the development of organ failure (http://usciitg.org/index.php/usciitg-proof), 2) studies to determine how ICU organizational and structural factors are associated with the quality of care and clinical outcomes (http://www.usciitg.org/index.php/cios), 3) development of a core data set for public health emergencies by working in conjunction with other federal agencies (i.e. Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR/HHS), FDA and Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA)) (http://usciitg.org/index.php/prep), and 4) studies evaluating the effect of early rehabilitation on hospital stay, muscle loss, and functional outcomes in burn patients with acute respiratory failure.

New clinical proposals for investigator-initiated studies can be submitted for presentation at the annual fall meeting at NIH sponsored by CII-SIG in collaboration with USCIIT. Typically, hypotheses are tested by multidisciplinary teams that openly solicit input and encourage collaboration among investigators with similar ideas.

We encourage any interested person in the NIH intramural and extramural community to participate in the CII-SIG including health care workers from critical care, anesthesiology, emergency medicine, internal medicine, nursing, pediatrics, pharmacy and nutrition, surgery and trauma, and respiratory and physical therapy biostatisticians, computer scientists, computational biologists, ethicists, policymakers, and anyone in the research community with an interest in critical care clinical research.